T H E O P H I L U S

²⁵ “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more

Isaiah 43:25

The work of Jesus on the cross, and the spilling of his blood for each and every one of us, is the ultimate act of finality. There is no greater finality than death itself. It marks the ultimate closure of the chapter of life. It was in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross that the work was finished for you and me, for the forgiveness of our sins, once and for all, never to be done again.

The book of Isaiah describes the kind of forgiveness the Lord finalizes in his death – the blotting out. The Hebrew word “Machah” means to wipe out, to wipe clean, to obliterate or annihilate.

Have you ever heard the phrase “in the red”? When a business is “in the red,” it means that the organization owes money or is in debt. This accounting term comes from when company expenses were recorded in red ink. If our sins are what stains the world, what destroys the lives of our neighbors and ourselves, the only price that could ever be paid for those sins is death. It is the debt that can never be paid. What can wash it clean? There is nothing that could truly ever wash it out. It either needs to be destroyed or the blood stains themselves need to be burned away by the bleach. And yet, when it is a clean slate, we would sin again and have it be written over with more sins that are to be paid for. But one cannot just erase those sins and expect it to remain that way. Justice needs to be served again and again.

So it is this: Christ comes to us, dies on the cross, and sheds his blood so that the ledger that is written entirely in the red of the bloodshed from our sins is now covered and drenched in his. It is washed by the blood that will stain it all red, with his blood that is holy, forever, and eternal. Thus, there on that cross, our Lord Jesus Christ took on my sins, which he carried for me, and the judgment that was impending for me. Sealed for us is his promise, his forgiveness, his justice, our future, our eternity, and his redemption.